2013 Subaru BRZ: Agricultural Transmission

January 10, 2013

The BRZ's shift action is not what you'd call greasy. It's not buttery, slick, slippery or any other of a handful of adjectives you might use to describe, say, one of Acura's better manual gearboxes. Instead, the throws are chunky, deliberate, notchy, agricultural, or any of a handful of adjectives that describe a transmission that's not offensive in any way, but one you can't quite call refined.

I've only had the opportunity to drive a couple of WRXs, neither of them stock. So I was curious to hear from our in-house Subie guru Rex Torres if this shift characteristic was shared across the family. He agreed that it was, saying that his own WRX exhibited the same feel. Then he urged me to drive the FR-S, saying that something — bushings, linkage, special sauce maybe — feels different in the FR-S.